The electricity and trash are bad examples to bring up. You're paying for those with increased rent and municipal taxes. Open source projects like Firefox and

The electricity and trash are bad examples to bring up. You're paying for those with increased rent and municipal taxes. Open source projects like Firefox and Linux are sort of counter-examples, except they're backed by nonprofits. If a nonprofit is giving something away, there's actually a decent chance that they don't have surreptitious motives. Same for a friend giving you something, that's not really a "product" in the sense of the saying. I'd say that HN actually falls into the category of productizing its users. The reason HN exists is to attract talent to Y Combinator, and to get an audience for the companies they fund. It's a productive relationship that has created a great forum, but HN doesn't just exist for goodness' sake.